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What you need to know

  • Google is rolling out a new citations tool to Google Docs this month.
  • The tool aims to speed up the citation process and remove the need for students to use third-party tools while drafting essays.
  • It'll support popular referencing styles like MLA, APA, and Chicago.

Writing an essay with your latest revolutionary and world-changing ideas all well and good, but sooner or later you're going to have to back up your most salient points with citations and sources. Unfortunately, if you're writing in an academic capacity, you can't simply drop in a link with a handy CMS tool and call it a day. No, you're going to need to engage in the most tedious part of the essay process: referencing.

As many students use G Suite and Google Docs for essay creation, the company is adding a new citations tool that'll help alleviate that tedium.

"Using this feature, you can easily insert in-text citations and create a bibliography in the MLA, APA, or Chicago (author-date) styles. Sources types supported include books, book sections, websites, journal articles and newspaper articles," Google says.

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Citations In Google DocsSource: Google

Typically, most students would either type out citations manually with a style guide on hand in another tab, or they'd use a tool or addon like Citethisforme and then paste it into the document. Google's new feature cuts out the middleman. Unfortunately, it does lack some more commonly known styles like OSCOLA and Havard referencing so it looks like third-party reference generators aren't going out of business anytime soon.

It's available immediately though you may need to wait for up to 15 days to see it while it rolls out.

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